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The author of “The Valley of Amazement” and “The Joy Luck Club” fantasizes about catching up on reading in prison: “No email, no useless warranties, . . . no invitations to fund--raisers.”
请描述一下你理想的阅读体验（何时、何地、何书、何种体验）。 I’ve often fantasized I would get a lot of writing done if I were put in prison for a minor crime. Three to six months. Incarceration would be good for reading as well. No email, no useless warranties to get steamed about, no invitations to fund-raisers. But until I commit the necessary minor crime, I would choose a 12-hour flight. Time flies by fast with a good book. Two benefits. I do have to pick the right-length book matched to destination. It’s terrible to have 20 pages left and then be told to put your seat in an upright position. That happened when I read “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” 我常常幻想，自己如果因犯了一宗小罪进了监狱，会写出不少东西。三到六个月。禁闭也适合看书。没有电邮，没有需要为之上火的无用的授权书，没有募捐邀请函。不过在犯小罪之前，我会选择一次12小时的飞行。看一本好书，时间过得很快。好处有二。我必须得挑选篇幅合适的书，到达目的地正好看完。最糟的是，你还有20页没看完，却被告知要降落了。我在看《永生的海拉》(The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks)的时候，就遇到了这种事。 Who are your favorite novelists? 你最喜欢的小说家有哪些？ My favorite anything is always relative to the context of present time, place and mood. When I finish a book and want to immediately find another by the same author and no other, that author is elevated to my favorite. In the past, they have included: Louise Erdrich, Vladimir Nabokov, Javier Marías, Richard Ford, Ha Jin, Annie Proulx, Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Scott Fitzgerald, D. H. Lawrence, Jamaica Kincaid — many, many others. 我最喜欢的东西总是跟目前的环境、地点与心情相关。如果我看完一本书，马上还想找同一位作者而不是别的作者的另一本书，这位作者就已进入我最喜欢的名单了。迄今为止，我最喜欢的作者有：路易丝o厄德里克(Louise Erdrich)、弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫(Vladimir Nabokov)、哈维尔·马里亚斯(Javier Marías)、理查德o福特(Richard Ford)、哈金(Ha Jin)、安妮o普鲁(Annie Proulx)、阿瑟·柯南·道尔(Arthur Conan Doyle)、菲兹杰拉德(F. Scott Fitzgerald)、··劳伦斯(D. H. Lawrence)、雅麦嘉o金凯德(Jamaica Kincaid)——还有许许多多的作者。 Do you have a favorite classic work of Chinese literature? 中国文学中，你有最喜欢的经典作品吗？ “Jing Ping Mei” (“The Plum in the Golden Vase”). The author is anonymous. I would describe it as a book of manners for the debauched. Its readers in the late Ming period likely hid it under their bedcovers, because it was banned as pornographic. It has a fairly modern, naturalistic style — “Show, don’t tell” — and there are a lot of sex scenes shown. For years, I didn’t know I had the expurgated edition that provided only elliptical hints of what went on between falling into bed and waking up refreshed. The unexpurgated edition is instructional. 《金瓶梅》。作者佚名。我以为，对于那些沉湎酒色之徒，这是一部宝鉴。晚明的读者可能是把这本书藏在床底下的，因为它是被禁的淫书。这本书有一种相当现代而自然主义的风格——“呈现而不告诉”——还有很多性爱场面描写。有很多年，我一直不知道我手头的是一个删节本，从上床到精神振奋地醒来之间发生的事，只隐隐约约提到。全本才是教材。 Who are the best Chinese and Chinese-American writers working today? 当今最好的华人、美籍华人作家有哪些？ I’ve read Chinese novels only in translation, which limits how well I can judge who is “best.” I’ve read work by the early feminist writers Wang Anyi, Zhang Jie and Cheng Naishan (who died recently). You have to understand how radical their novels and short stories were at the time they were published. They included notions of suffering, thwarted love, the Cultural Revolution, a forlorn look at the past, and a nostalgic Shanghai. A love story could have been seen as criticism of the Cultural Revolution. I also admire Yan Geling’s stories. Beneath beauty and idealism is cruelty and ill intent. I’ve read a couple of Mo Yan’s novels, which also could be judged as a less patriotic view of the Great Leap Forward. When he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, there was a flurry of criticism accusing him of being an apple polisher to the party for not speaking up for another Nobel laureate, who was in prison, the dissident Liu Xiaobo. Then came the bashing of Mo Yan’s work for its crude literary style and subjects. With prizes, I’ve observed, literary merit is often a sliding scale based on the author’s political actions — or inaction. 我看中文小说，读的都是英译本，这使我无从判断谁是“最好的”。我读过早期女性主义作家王安忆、张洁和程乃珊（最近过世了）的书。要知道她们的长篇和短篇小说在发表时属于非常激进的作品。小说的主题包括苦难、苦恋、文革、伤逝，还有令人怀旧的上海。一部爱情小说可以视为是对文革的批判。我也喜欢严歌苓的小说。美与理想主义下面掩藏的是残酷与恶意。我读过莫言的几本小说，那些小说对大跃进的描绘可以被认为是不太爱国的。他获诺贝尔文学奖后，受到一阵猛烈的批评，说他拍中国共产党的马屁，不为另一位诺贝尔奖得主、正在坐牢的异见人士刘晓波说话。然后很多人开始抨击莫言粗糙的文学风格与主题。 我注意到，很多奖项是根据作者的政治作为或不作为来评价他的文学价值的。 Among Chinese-American writers, two immediately come to mind: Yiyun Li and Ha Jin, with their particular mix of displaced characters, circumstances and past. Their stories often have tragedy, but rise above that. They elicit discomfort and compassion — good and necessary conditions that change me, as any writing is capable of doing by putting me in unfamiliar situations and magnifying the details I would have overlooked. 美籍华人作家中，我马上想到的有两位：李翊云与哈金，各自将离开家园的人物、境遇与过往结合在一起。他们的小说往往有悲剧，但又超越了悲剧。他们的作品让人不安与同情——这是使我发生变化的充分必要条件，这也是一切写作所能做到的，使我置身于陌生的情景之中，或是将我忽视了的细节放大。 Please take a moment to herald your favorite overlooked or underappreciated writer. 请为你喜欢而又受到忽视或低估的作家说几句。 For years, I have been heralding the work of Rabih Alameddine, a Lebanese-American writer. His prose is gorgeous, his approach irreverent, and the ideas in his stories are sometimes comical or fantastical, but always deadly serious — very relevant to understanding the complex history behind multiple holy wars today. In Italy and Spain, his books are best sellers. He has full-page profiles in major newspapers, has garnered prizes, is a darling of literary festivals and has won acclaim from international writers. In the U.S., he’s hardly known. Why is there a geographic divide in literary appreciation? 多年来，我一直在推荐美籍黎巴嫩裔作家拉比·阿拉米丁(Rabih Alameddine)的作品。他的散文美极了，他的写作手法不恭，他小说中的理念有时滑稽、怪诞，但总是认真得要死——非常有助于理解当今各种圣战背后复杂的历史。在意大利和西班牙，他的作品是畅销书。他的传略介绍整版出现在各大报纸上，他获得过多种奖项，是各文学节上的红人，赢得国际上作家的赞誉。在美国，他几乎不为人知。为何在文学欣赏方面存在地域差异？ What kinds of stories are you drawn to? Any you steer clear of? 什么样的故事吸引你？有什么故事是你会刻意避开的吗？ I’m open to reading almost anything — fiction, nonfiction — as long as I know from the first sentence or two that this is a voice I want to listen to for a good long while. It has much to do with imagery and language, a particular perspective, the assured knowledge of the particular universe the writer has created. 我是几乎什么都读的—— 虚构或非虚构作品——只要我从开头的一两句知道这正是我想倾听一段时间的声音。这很大程度上跟意象、语言、特定的视角，以及作家创造的特定世界有关系。 I don’t steer clear of genres. I simply haven’t steered myself toward some of them. I haven’t sought out much science fiction since the days when my husband and I read aloud H. P. Lovecraft while sitting around the campfire on backpacking trips. In those days, I would also read aloud gruesome passages from “Bear Attacks.” We enjoyed scaring ourselves witless in the wilderness, where there were, in fact, many bears. These days, I simply read the news and all the horror stories about the House of Representatives. 我不刻意避开某些体裁。我也从未刻意只选某些体裁的来读。自从当年丈夫跟我一起背包旅行，围坐在篝火旁大声朗读H·P·洛夫克拉夫特(H. P. Lovecraft)的作品之后，我没怎么去找科幻小说看。在那些日子里，我还会大声朗读《熊的袭击》(Bear Attacks)中的恐怖段落。我们喜欢在荒野里把自己吓得魂不附体，而荒野里真的有很多熊。现在我只看有关众议院的新闻和恐怖故事。 What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves? 你书架上什么样的书可能会令我们惊讶？ A lot of books on animal cognition and behavior — crows, ravens, dogs and even ants. I’m a sucker for dog training books as well. And I collect antiquarian books on biology. One is a four-volume set, “The Science of Life,” by sci-fi writer H. G. Wells; his son G. P. Wells; and Julian Huxley, a biologist and also a prominent eugenicist. 许多有关动物认知与行为的书，乌鸦、渡鸦、狗，甚至还有蚂蚁。我还酷爱关于养狗的图书。我还收藏生物学方面的古书。有一套是四卷本的《生命的科学》(The Science of Life)，作者是科幻小说作家H.·G·威尔士(H. G. Wells)、他儿子G·P·威尔士(G. P. Wells)，以及朱利安·赫胥黎(Julian Huxley)，最后这位是生物学家，也是一位杰出的优生学家。 What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift? 你收到的图书礼物中，最好的是哪一本？ On Dec. 7, 1999, I left the bedside of my editor Faith Sale, just before she was removed from life support. We had been like sisters. Two hours later, Stephen King called and asked my husband, Lou, and me to meet him at his hotel room. It was his first public foray after being nearly killed by a van six months before. He gave me an advance reading copy of “On Writing.” A couple of years before, we had talked about the question no one asks us in interviews: language. He had been thinking of doing a book on writing, and I had said, “Do it.” He now asked me to look at the dedication. It was for me. We then went to see the premiere of “The Green Mile,” about a man on death row who can heal people, including those dying of cancer. That night was both enormously sad and gloriously uplifting. 1999年12月7日，就在我的编辑菲丝·瑟尔(Faith Sale)被切断生命支持前，我在床前跟她告别。我们曾经亲如姐妹。两小时后，斯蒂芬·金(Stephen King)打来电话，邀请我丈夫路易（Lou，谭恩美丈夫全名Louis DeMattei，Lou为昵称——译注）和我去他下榻的宾馆见面。这是他六个月前差点被货车撞死后，首次公开旅行。他给了我一本《写作这回事》(On Writing)的样书。一两年前，我们曾谈及在访谈中谁也没有问过我们的问题：语言。他曾想写一本论写作的书，我对他说：“写吧。”现在他让我看一下献词。是献给我的。然后，我们去看了《绿里奇迹》(The Green Mile)的首映，讲的是一个死囚能治病，包括那些得了癌症快要死的人。那个夜晚，既令人极为悲伤，又极其鼓舞人心。 What book has had the greatest impact on you? 哪一本书对你的影响最大？ Probably the Bible. My father was a minister, and I heard verses every day. I memorized big whacks of passages to earn progressive levels of pins. The repetitive rhythms of the Bible were inscribed in my writing brain from childhood. (And it may account for my tendency to start sentences with “and.”) Many of my stories also relate to undoing handed-down beliefs, whether they come from religion, society or mothers. And my writing sensibility was also warped by a steady dose of gothic imagery, often related to religious sins or virtue: David braining Goliath, Samson’s bloody head missing a lock of hair, a stinking corpse arising to be kissed by relatives. 那要算是《圣经》了。我父亲是一名牧师，我每天都在听圣经。我大段大段地背诵经文，以获得进步徽章。《圣经》那种重复的节奏自从童年起便已刻在我写作的脑海里了（这也可以解释我为什么喜欢句子以“and”开头）。我小说中的许多故事也跟破坏代代相传的信仰有关，不管这些信仰来自宗教、社会还是母亲。我写作的敏感也持续不断地受到哥特式意象的歪曲，通常与宗教的罪与善有关：大卫(David)猛击歌利亚(Goliath)的脑袋，参孙(Samson)失去一缕头发的血糊糊的脑袋，发臭的尸体坐起来让亲人们亲吻。 If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? 如果你可以要求总统看一本书，会是哪一本？ I would never require anyone to read any book. That seems antithetical to why we read — which is to choose a book for our personal reasons. I always shudder when I’m told my books are on required reading lists. 我从来不会要求任何人去看任何书。那似乎有违于我们读书的初衷——我们选择书籍都是出自个人的原因。每当有人告诉我，我的作品列在必读书目上，我总是心里一抖。 Did you grow up with a lot of books? What are your memories of being read to as a child? 你童年时读过很多书吗？童年时听大人给你读书的记忆是什么？ Books were luxuries. We had the World Book Encyclopedia, donated Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, inspirational books by Billy Graham, Bibles in foreign languages and my favorite, a book on a high shelf called “Psychopathia Sexualis.” One Christmas I received an Italian book of Chinese fairy tales. All the sages, gods and mortals looked like Italian movie actors and actresses. I recently unearthed it. 那个时候，书籍算是奢侈品了。我们有《世界图书百科全书》(World Book Encyclopedia)、捐赠的《读者文摘》浓缩版(Reader’s Digest Condensed Books)、比利·格雷厄姆(Billy Graham)的多本励志书，不同外文版的《圣经》，而我最喜欢的一本书，放在高高的书架上，书名《性精神病态》(Psychopathia Sexualis)。有一年圣诞节，我收到一本意大利文版的中国童话。所有的圣人、神仙和凡人看起来都像意大利电影演员。这本书我最近刚找出来。 My mother and father didn’t read fiction books, at least not in English. But for one year, my father read to my brothers and me bedtime stories, a page a night from a book called “365 Stories,” covering the daily life of happy American kids with minor dilemmas. The fiction books I read on my own came from the library. From the age of 6, I carefully chose five or six every two weeks, working my way through the ones I could reach on progressively higher shelves. Fairy tales were favorites. I crossed a threshold of reader pride after finishing “To Kill a Mockingbird.” And I made it a point to read banned books, like “The Catcher in the Rye,” which led to counseling sessions with a youth minister, who told me such books would give me sinful feelings. That incident solidified feelings I have about the power of books and one’s helplessness without them. 我的父母不看小说的，起码是不看英文小说。但有一年，父亲给我兄弟和我讲睡前故事，每晚一页，书名叫《365个故事》(365 Stories)，讲的是幸福的美国小孩碰到小麻烦之类的日常生活。我自己读的小说书则是从图书馆借的。从六岁起，我每两周精心挑选五六本，一路看下来，能够到的书架也越来越高。我最喜欢的是童话故事。在看完《杀死一只知更鸟》(To Kill a Mockingbird)后，我终于迈过了读者自豪感的门槛。而我也决定要读禁书，如《麦田里的守望者》(The Catcher in the Rye)，结果是青少年牧师做了几次辅导，牧师告诉我，这类书会给我带来罪恶感。这件事使我更加坚信书籍的力量和没有书的无助感。 Do you have a favorite childhood literary character or hero? 童年时期你有没有最喜欢的文学人物或主人公？ Jane Eyre remains a favorite. Her truthfulness sometimes made me laugh. And her loneliness and need to make her own way mirrored my feelings. The Little Prince is another lost soul I clung to. Pippi Longstocking was a bit too cheerful. 《简爱》(Jane Eyre)一直是我最喜欢的。她的真诚有时让我发笑。而她的孤独与独立特行的需求则映照出我自己的情感。《小王子》(The Little Prince)是我十分依恋的另一个失落的灵魂。《长筒袜皮皮》(Pippi Longstocking)则有点太欢乐了。 Which writers inspire you? 哪些作家给你带来灵感？ When I first started writing short stories, I read collections by Amy Hempel, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Molly Giles, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Richard Ford, Mary Robison, Chekhov and many others. And then I read Louise Erdrich’s “Love Medicine,” with its strong multiple voices. The stories were bound by community and mutual loss. That later became a model for the structure of “The Joy Luck Club.” 我刚开始写短篇小说的时候，读过下面这些作家的作品集：艾米·亨佩尔(Amy Hempel)、梅维斯·加伦特(Mavis Gallant)、爱丽丝·门罗(Alice Munro）、莫莉·贾尔斯 (Molly Giles)、弗兰纳里·奥康纳(Flannery O’Connor)、尤多拉·韦尔蒂(Eudora Welty)、理查德·福特(Richard Ford)、玛丽·罗毕森(Mary Robison)和契科夫(Chekhov)，还有其他许多作家的作品集。后来我读了路易丝o厄德里克的《爱之药》(Love Medicine)，这本小说有好几位讲述者。这些故事由社区与共同的失去联系在一起。它后来成了《喜福会》(The Joy Luck Club)结构的样板。 These days, any book that astonishes me can either inspire me or make me feel I should give up writing. Coetzee’s “Disgrace” made me feel the latter. 现在，任何使我惊奇的书都会给我带来灵感或者让我产生一种应该放弃写作的感觉。库切(Coetzee)的《耻辱》（Disgrace）就曾让我有后一种感觉。 If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know? 如果可以，在所有在世或过世的作家中，你最想见谁？你最想知道什么？ Emily Dickinson. I would be her nursemaid, her quiet companion on walks in the woods. I imagine that anything she spotted — feathers, tea leaves, a hole in a fence — would lead her to utter something profound about human emotions in a lifetime of expectation. 艾米莉·狄金森(Emily Dickinson)。我愿做她的女仆，静静地陪她在林中散步。我想，她看到的一切——羽毛、茶叶、篱笆上的一个洞——都会引发她就毕生期待的人类情感说出一番深刻的话来。 If you could meet any character from literature, who would it be? 如果你可以见到文学作品的任何一个人物，你最想见谁？ I would not want characters to come to my world. They’d lose their special qualities, the perfect amount of what I should know about them. On the other hand, I could go to theirs because they would not have any preconceptions of who I was. I’d like to hang out with the Cheshire cat, learn how to disappear, and speak in smart illogic. He would look exactly like his pen-and-ink illustration by Tenniel. I’d be rendered in pen and ink, too. That would be required for entering a pen-and-ink world with its particular dimensional strangeness. 我不想让作品中的人物进入我的世界。那样他们就会失去其特有的品质。我对他们的了解就应该仅限于书中的描述，那是完美的状态。另一方面，我可以进入他们的世界，因为他们对我是谁没有任何先入之见。我想跟咧嘴笑的柴郡猫出去溜达，学习如何隐身，如何说不合逻辑的俏皮话。他看起来就跟坦尼尔(Tenniel)的钢笔画插图一模一样。我也愿意被人画成钢笔画。要想进入钢笔画的世界，就必须如此，因为那个世界具有一种特定的维度陌生感。 Do you miss playing with your old band, the Rock Bottom Remainders? 你是否怀念与老乐队“摇滚滞销书” (Rock Bottom Remainders)演奏的日子？ I deeply miss our founder, Kathi Kamen Goldmark. But I have a feeling the Remainders will go on like the sequels of novels. We are already banding together at the Miami Book Fair to do our first annual reunion. 我深深地怀念我们乐队的发起人卡迪·卡门·戈德马克（Kathi Kamen Goldmark）。不过，我有一种感觉，乐队会像小说的续集一样继续下去。我们已经决定在迈阿密书展上再次组队，举办第一个年度聚会。 What’s next on your reading list? 你阅读书单上的下一部作品是什么？ I’ve just started two books. One is dark, “Weights and Measures,” by Joseph Roth. It fits the mood of what I feel is happening in the U.S. — the dangerous shifts, the disintegration of what held the country together, the moral demise of politicians, moneylenders and heroes. 有两部我已经开始在看了。一部是令人绝望的《度量衡》(Weights and Measures)，作者是约瑟夫·罗特(Joseph Roth)。这本书很符合目前美国的氛围——危险的变化，曾经的国家凝聚力的解体，以及政治家、放高利贷者和英雄的道德沦丧。 The other is more hopeful: “My Beloved World,” by Sonia Sotomayor. I’m grateful for her wisdom and compassion on the Supreme Court. In June, Justice Sotomayor invited my husband and me to have a private lunch with her in her chambers. This was right when the justices began deliberations over the major cases. We talked about our mothers’ fears, about publishing, translations, snorkeling, adopted kids and cultural self-identification — all sorts of things, except the cases. I’ve read the first 10 pages of her memoir and know already that it’s like a continuation of the conversation we had. 另一部则充满了希望——索尼娅·索托马约尔(Sonia Sotomayor)的《我挚爱的世界》(My Beloved World)。我对她在最高法院表现出来的智慧与怜悯充满感激与敬佩。今年六月，索托马约尔大法官邀请我们夫妻二人到她的法官办公室与她一起共进私人午餐。当时法官们正在开始审议重大案件。我们谈到母辈的恐惧、出版、译本、浮潜、被领养的孩子、文化的自我认同——各种各样的事情，就是不谈案件。她的回忆录我刚看了前十页就知道它像是我们交谈的继续。 本文最初发表于2013年11月17日。 翻译：王晓元 |
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